Missing Atascadero woman found after truck plunges off Ragged Point bluff

UPDATE 12 p.m.: The CHP has released more details about the Atascadero woman found after driving her truck off a bluff near Ragged Point.

According to a news release Wednesday, Debra Lopez, 57, was driving a 1996 GMC pickup truck south on Highway 1 on Saturday when she was involved in a single-vehicle crash just south of Ragged Point.

For reasons still unknown, the truck left the highway and fell down the steep embankment, overturning and ultimately coming to rest on the truck's roof. It was not visible from the highway, according to the CHP.

Lopez was able to free herself from the vehicle and reach the top of the embankment late Tuesday, where she was picked up by a passerby.

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UPDATE 10:20 a.m.: The Atascadero woman who was found near Ragged Point after being missing since Saturday was in good condition Wednesday morning at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, hospital spokesman Ron Yukelson said.

Yukelson did not know specifically what condition Debra Lopez was in when she was taken to the hospital Tuesday, but he said she is "awake and alert" and declined interviews with news media.

No other information was immediately available.

Original story: An Atascadero woman was found by a passerby on Tuesday afternoon after she climbed up a 150-foot bluff near Ragged Point where her truck had gone off the edge possibly on Saturday, authorities said.

Atascadero police said Debra Lopez was reported missing by her husband after she left home at about 3:45 p.m. Saturday in a white 1996 Chevrolet 1500 pickup to go to the store and never returned.

At about 5 p.m. Tuesday, the CHP responded to a report of a woman who had been picked up by a passerby while walking on Highway 1 near the area where her truck apparently had gone off the cliff three days before, a dispatcher said. The woman was taken to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center.

Atascadero police Corporal Michele Schamber confirmed that the woman was Lopez, although she did not have details Tuesday night on the accident or whether Lopez has spent three days on the hillside.